FreeBSD Man Pages

EXPAND(1) FreeBSD General Commands Manual EXPAND(1)
NAMEexpand, unexpand -- expand tabs to spaces, and vice versa
SYNOPSISexpand [-ttab1,tab2,...,tabn] [file...]
unexpand [-a | -ttab1,tab2,...,tabn] [file...]
DESCRIPTION
The expand utility processes the named files or the standard input writ-
ing the standard output with tabs changed into blanks. Backspace charac-
ters are preserved into the output and decrement the column count for tab
calculations. The expand utility is useful for pre-processing character
files (before sorting, looking at specific columns, etc.) that contain
tabs.
The unexpand utility puts tabs back into the data from the standard input
or the named files and writes the result on the standard output.
The following options are available:
-a (unexpand only.) By default, only leading blanks and tabs are
reconverted to maximal strings of tabs. If the -a option is
given, then tabs are inserted whenever they would compress the
resultant file by replacing two or more characters.
-ttab1,tab2,...,tabn
Set tab stops at column positions tab1, tab2, ..., tabn. If only
a single number is given, tab stops are set that number of column
positions apart instead of the default number of 8.
ENVIRONMENT
The LANG, LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution
of expand and unexpand as described in environ(7).
EXIT STATUS
The expand and unexpand utilities exit 0 on success, and >0 if an error
occurs.
STANDARDS
The expand and unexpand utilities conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001
(``POSIX.1'').
HISTORY
The expand command appeared in 3.0BSD.
FreeBSD 10.1 October 13, 2006 FreeBSD 10.1